—Why didn’t the player’s union defend Michael Vick?
Writer inadvertently reveals the essence of the reductionist insanity at the heart of many “slippery slope” arguments. “If we don’t defend the indefensible, then how are we going to defend the…defensible?”

–Franklin Roosevelt once said: “When You See a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” He should have added: “I did.”

“For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. … These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America’s general officer corps.”

“The JCS lies beyond salvaging. Before you build a new house, you tear the old one down. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it’s wrecking-ball time. A chairman possessing vision, strategic insight, and integrity ought to be the first to acknowledge that.”

“There are many books with unreliable narrators under the control of sane authors; [Valis] is the only one I know where a sane, reliable narrator (on the book’s own terms) is under the control of a clearly crazy author.”

Why sell DRM-free tracks, but not through iTunes? “[T]o prevent the DRM monopoly Apple currently has going. The one, ironically, that Universal and other music companies demanded of Apple in the first place. The one that Apple also wants out of.”

“[G]ive me the guy maybe doctoring his biochemistry in an attempt to stay around longer, do more, fend off the kids with greater fervor, even reach for some outlandish, unprecedented greatness, over the guy who literally drowns his talent over time.”